Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's easy to feel like this place focuses on theatre. It's easy to forget that outside these walls is the real world, a real world where, from dinner tables to water coolers to checkouts, families are asking themselves one thing: how am I going to make ends meet? It is a question that has no easy answer but prompts many more tough questions, like these: Where will I find another $18,000 in mortgage repayments? Where will I find an after-tax wage increase of $24,000 to pay for that? What will my family have to cut instead? How will I tell the kids that there won't be a camping trip this year? How will I tell them that they can't go on a school excursion with their friends? How will I tell them that we can't afford to go to the cinema, go to the football, keep a streaming service or go out to dinner as a family, and, hardest of all, that they will be spending less time with a parent because the parent has to take extra shifts? For some, how do they tell them that they might even lose their home? Others will ask: 'How will I tell them that I've let them down?' This place is about politics, but for these families it isn't. It isn't about tactics, as the Prime Minister said today in question time. These are real questions that have been spoken out loud in every corner of our nation.

In a democracy, it is vital that the losing party acknowledge and respect the result, and we do. Australians placed their trust in the Albanese government to lead our nation and to put the people first. They did so at a time when the war in Ukraine was well underway, as the member for Page pointed out. They did so at a time when we were all well aware of the supply chain challenges that occurred during the COVID pandemic. They did so, because they listened to and trusted what the Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, said. He said:

And—as your Prime Minister—I won't run from responsibility.

I won't treat every crisis as a chance to blame someone else.

I will show up, I will step up, I will bring people together.

They did so because they trusted him. They trusted him when he said that costs would be lower. They trusted him when he specifically said that energy bills would be $275 lower—97 times. They trusted him when he said that mortgages would be cheaper and that families would be better off under a Labor government. Day after day in that campaign they saw the now Prime Minister look down the camera, and they put their trust in him. They trusted you, as a Labor government, at your word—that it was not just puff, that it was not just a line. They trusted you as a government that would be capable of being like a statesman and not a brawler.

So what has happened since? A cost-of-living crisis has hit them hard. Electricity prices are going up and gas prices are going up. And many who have to drive long distances to get to work are seeing prices of two dollars or more as they put petrol in their car. We have spoken many times about the Treasurer's long-form essay. It has been instructive, but not for all of the reasons he might wish. He also wrote an even longer form paper for his PhD thesis—and I won't go over that. But neither of these papers have much economics in them. Neither of them are about the national interest. What they instead offer is an insight into the focus of this Treasurer and this government—a focus on power. The clue is in the title of his thesis, 'Brawler Statesman: Paul Keating and Prime Ministerial Leadership in Australia'. It even has an entire chapter entitled 'Throwing grenades'.

This is a Treasurer, Prime Minister and government more focused on power: how power is obtained, how power is wielded and how power can be retained. In last year's campaign, the Treasurer also looked down the camera and asked Australians to take him at his word. So we ask the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to close your laptops and to take your focus off the backbench and your ambitions for further promotion. We ask you to focus on struggling families; to stand with them at the dinner table, the water cooler and the check-out and to give them comfort about those questions. Give them comfort that, as the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the government, you can be a statesman and not a brawler. We ask you to focus on the cost of living.

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